As I understand it, there's a bit of a debate in the EAD world between
tagging <subject>, <persname>, <corpname>, etc., wherever these terms might
occur in the finding aid, versus extracting them from their immediate
contexts and bundling them together within <controlaccess>. Is this what
the original question was getting at?
I've found myself persuaded by the argument that bundling these terms
together has at present a higher probability of useful and successful
implementation than the alternative. That is, using <controlaccess> is more
likely to encourage consistent use of authority control and uniform
normalization practices, without which most of the benefits of tagging
subject access terms are lost. This is more of a social than technological
argument, but heck, archivists are just people (I think).
I'd be interested to hear other arguments, not about archivists but about
the advantages of tagging <subject>, <persname>, etc., here and there in
the finding aid without <controlaccess>.
--David Ruddy
At 08:06 AM 12/7/98 -0800, you wrote:
>Merrilee, I know HOW to encode the subject element in EAD, and I've seen
>WHERE the Library of Congress places theirs. I bought the tag library hot
>off the press at the SAA meeting in Orlando. My question for the listserv
>is twofold:
>
> 1) Will all the repositories be adding subject access terms?
>
> 2) Where will everyone place them in the finding aids? In a general
>location following the scope and content note, or within each series
>description?
>
>Sue
>